Egypt-in the demotic, the hieratic, the enchorial and the hieroglyphical.

We mention these few tablets only as specimens. If all that has been brought to England alone from Egypt could be intelligently examined, it would be needless to write a word in proof of the extent to which the arts and sciences were culti vated in Egypt, at least four thousand years ago; not to mention the priceless Egyptian treasures at Turin, Rome, Venice, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Madrid, St. Petersbugh, &c., &c. In order to form a just estimate of the intellectual productions of the ancient Egyptians, it would be necessary to visit the mu seums of all these cities, not forgetting the British Museum. • A tour of this kind, duly performed, would give a much more correct idea of what Egyptian civilization really was, than any examination, however thorough, of every spot, both in Upper and Lower Egypt, where any monument is to be seen at the present day. What a commentary it is on the vanity of the present age, that while there are many of these wonderful relics of a remote antiquity, too profound and learned for the comprehension of our most eminent savans, that ninety-five out of a hundred, even of what are called the intelligent classes, could not be persuaded that the Egyptians or any other people were capable of so much, or knew as much as themselves!

But it is often asked, Were not the Egyptians Negroes? No one that can pretend to have paid any attention to ethnology, can entertain even a suspicion of this kind any longer. That there were many Negroes in Egypt in its palmiest days, is very clear; but it is still clearer that they were not the Egyptians; although they were far superior both physically and intellectually in the time of the Pharaohs, to what they are now. Nothing is more conclusively proved by the monuments, than that the Egyptians were of a copper color, like the Moors of the present day, or like the Hindoos. All the portraits of Sesostris represent him as of this color; and the same remark will apply to all other personages represented on the monuments, and known to be native Egyptians, with, perhaps, the sole exception of Memnon, who is a shade darker. Virgil describes the latter as black; but he is described by Homer as second only to Achilles in manly beauty. The fact that the hair of the Egyptians is sometimes curled as well as black, has deceived many; but there is this important difference, that it is never woolly. The Negro type is easily distinguished on all the monuments, even from the darkest of the Nubians. Not the least tinge of Negro blood is exhibited by the Egyptian artist. The illustrations of Champollion and

Rosellini will satisfy the most skeptical on this point; but the same illustrations prove that the Negroes were by no means so much despised as they are at the present, but were in fact thought more of than the Jews. To prove this, it would be almost sufficient to show that even Egyptian princes sometimes intermarried with the Negro race; which can be very easily done. We need not go beyond the case of Memnon, whose mother was undoubtedly a mulatto, if not a negress; but evidently one of a superior order. However, in this fact we have the secret of the erroneous opinion so generally entertained by a certain class-an opinion which has been much strengthened by the conduct of the wife of Potiphar towards Joseph. But, had no portraits been given on the monuments or elsewhere, the noble works of the ancient Egyptians would be sufficient evidence that they belonged to a noble race.

ART. II.-1. De la Démocratie en Amérique. Par M. ALEXIS DE TOQUEVILLE. 2 vols. Paris. 1861.

2. Democracy in America. By M. ALEXIS DE TOQUEVILLE. Translated by HENRY REEVE. 2 vols., 8vo. London. 1860,

3. The Republic of Plato-Bohn's Classical Library.

4. Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary. Article Democracy.

WE do not speak of New England on account of its own intrinsic interest, great as that interest undoubtedly is, but because it contains to a superlative degree the characteristics of America; and without much exaggeration American life may be called the quintescence of life in the nineteenth century. When, therefore, we name individualism as the characteristic of New England, we have pointed out the leading feature of our modern civilization; a feature which affords us the Ariadne-thread to many a labyrinth of human desires and motives.

The first cause of this individualism is the abolition of primogeniture and the laws of exclusive privilege, for these laws are the index of wealth, and wealth is the exponent of a more complete cultivation, a more perfect, powerful manhood, in short-of an aristocracy. The world will never be without an aristocracy, for there will always be a class who shall be respected and obeyed as possessing in a marked degree the qualities of perfect manhood. God is continually sending into the world men who are very unequal in point of talent and power, so that, talk as much as we will, we shall

never have perfect equality until the sins, and the virtues too, of the fathers cease to descend on the children; until the divine law of hereditary descent is revoked. And until that time shall come, the divine right of such kings as these will still be recognized long after crowns have become but crumbling relics. The distinction between this aristocracy and that of past ages is very marked; the one is heaven-born, the other of earth; the one is an aristocracy of birth, the other of race. In every country of Europe with whose history we are acquainted, the population has been composed of two ingre dients: the conquerors, holding the wealth of the land, with its consequent cultivation and power; the conquered, living in silent poverty and obedience. The Spartans had their Helots; the Romans were divided into patrician and plebeian; in England the Saxon ruled the Celt, and the Norman in his turn oppressed the Saxon. After mankind had tried during five thousand years to govern themselves on the old principle of races, at a time when all these attempts had resulted in a miserable failure, and, in the darkness of the middle ages, the world seemed going back to primæval barbarism, God gave them a new world; new, not because before undiscovered, but because there the conquered dwindled and died, leaving the conquerors alone by themselves, to try over again the old experiment of society on the new basis of a single, equal race. As the result of this, in America there is no primogeniture or exclusive privilege, but in rights, if not in condition, all men are equal,* and instead of an aristocracy of race, we have only an aristocracy of birth.

Most men care little for what God thinks of them, more for their own self-respect, but most of all do they care for their standing in the estimation of their fellow men. The desire of our first parents to be as Gods has come down to their descendants in an ambition to hold a supreme position, to be honored, respected and obeyed by those about them; and, as Adam sacrificed God and eternity, so his children, to satisfy this desire, have ever since been giving up love, home, country and heaven. Of old this feeling in the masses was killed by the insurmountable obstacle of race, but now it has revived, and rules with invincible power, for this superiority is open to all, and the royal road thither is wealth. In fact, it always has been, and all the laws and armies of a government would

The absolute equality which exists in society, and the actual sovereignty of the people of America, repose on a maxim universally received in that country, viz.: "That every one is the best and sole judge of his own private interest. Every individual possesses an equal share of power, and participates alike in the government of the state. Every individual is therefore supposed to be as well informed, as virtuous, and as strong, as any of his fellow-citizens."-Dem. in Amer., vol. i., p. 79.

not be sufficient to prop up the superiority of a race, if a monopoly of wealth had not given them increased advantages, with abundant leisure to improve them, and, in consequence, that more perfect cultivation which is power. Men once worked for a certain class; for with that class only could they gain wealth, and consequently distinction. They devoted their energies to the welfare of their country, for in that country's position and welfare their own was identified; but abolition of privileged classes has opened the acquisition of wealth to all without distinction of race-and the security of modern governments guarantees possession of it; so that, as a result, we have an intense individualism in the pursuit of wealth, and through wealth, of aristocratic distinction. The results of this primæval ambition, having thus full sway, freed, as it is, from all bonds of race or country, are very obvious.

It has changed the whole character of action. The labor of the plebeian was toil, weary and heartless, as his toil must always be whose labor keeps its fruits for others; but this hope of individual advancement has infused a life into this toil, given it a soul, and made it energetic, enthusiastic work. The reason why mankind is advancing so fast towards a perfect dominion over all lower nature, is that before, weary hands were working, but now it is the strong and willing heart. Men work infinitely harder to-day than they did centuries ago. The iron rod of the tyrant was terrible, but its oppressive rule was nothing to the weight of that golden rod with which this desire for individual advancement rules the world. In labor as in morals, a man is his own hardest task-master, for another can control only his greater actions; but a man's own will, like the attraction of gravity, acts upon the minutest detail of life. Many have claimed that our government should appoint certain holidays like those of the English peasantry, in which the overdriven mind and overburdened body might find rest. But if appointed, they would not be observed, for the New Englander celebrates only two week-days, the Fourth of July, the anniversary of his political, and Thanksgiving, the memento of his religious individualism; all others are devoted to an unceasing round of work. Pleasures are divided into two great classes: the one we may call passive, because the mind is then rather acted upon than acting, as in the delights of the bodily appetites, and to some extent, the gratification of our social and æsthetical natures; the other is active, a pleasure which we find in doing; that fierce, wild delight which makes the simple enjoyments of the English peasantry as insipid to the sense of a New Englander as milk after the taste of strong liquors. The American is fairly drunk with this fierce pleas

ure of action. Under its influence he dashes into the wilderness, and, with frantic haste, rushes up a house, a village, a city, and falls worn out ere half his years are gone.

This tendency may be seen in the most ordinary concerns of life. Next to family prayers, when all are gathered about the altar to commune with God, that time when the family gathers about the table to commune with each other is the most sacred. The gratification of the appetite affords a gentle excitement, the taking of food fills up the pauses in the conversation, and all circumstances tend to make the meal-time the happiest portion of the day. Now in New England they eat to live, mere sensual gratification is the only pleasure attendant on the repast, and after a few hurried moments the man betakes himself again to his business; he cannot stop to be happy.

That this is fundamentally wrong, there can be no doubt. If God had meant that our lives should be of this character, a continual haste with no time for enjoyment, he would have made the air all oxygen, and would have given us no capaci ties to be filled, but only faculties to be kept in action. He would never have made a part of our natures to be left uncultivated and dead. Labor may be the strong warp of life, but these passive enjoyments are the many-colored woof which must be interwoven there to make the texture complete.

This mad haste defeats its own end. As we have before hinted, the pursuit of wealth is not for its own sake, nor yet for the sensual enjoyments that it may purchase; but wealth is desired that by its means may be obtained the cultivation and refinement which are the title deed of a higher rank in society. If the American sometimes forgets the end in the pursuit of the means, he does but that which mankind have done for ages, and are still doing. The pagan worshipping his god of wood, and the American, in the pursuit of wealth forgetting the cultivation it brings, belong to the same category. The very intensity of pursuit renders this disregard more radical. When the means have been acquired, and nothing is left but for the man to enter in and take possession of the cultivation he has earned, his nature, dwarfed and narrowed by years of unthinking toil, shrinks from the task, and contents itself with displaying and vaunting the empty insignia of a rank the man does not really occupy. As in individuals the pursuit defeats its own end, so does it when we consider men collectively. The theory which they hold, consciously or unconsciously, is this: that a man shall minister to some physical enjoyment of the world, and in return for his time and talent thus spent, he shall, in the shape of wealth, receive his own subsistence, the implements and opportunities of cultivation, together with the